We're All Gonna Die! - Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community

cchris · 06-18-2003, 06:54 PM

But it won't be from germ warfare, runaway nanobots, or shifting magnetic poles. A skeptical guide to Doomsday.

LINK TO STORY

By Gregg Easterbrook

Omigod, Earth's core is about to explode, destroying the planet and everything on it! That is, unless a gigantic asteroid strikes first. Or an advanced physics experiment goes haywire, negating space-time in a runaway chain reaction. Or the sun's distant companion star, Nemesis, sends an untimely barrage of comets our way. Or ...

Not long ago, such cosmic thrills, chills, and spills were confined to comic books, sci-fi movies, and the Book of Revelation. Lately, though, they've seeped into a broader arena, filling not only late-night talk radio, where such topics don't seem particularly out of place, but also earnest TV documentaries, slick mass-market magazines, newspapers, and a growing number of purportedly nonfiction books. Everywhere you turn, pundits are predicting biblical-scale disaster. In many scenarios, mankind is the culprit, unleashing atmospheric carbon dioxide, genetically engineered organisms, or runaway nanobots to exact a bitter revenge for scientific meddling. But even if human deployment of technology proves benign, Mother Nature will assert her primacy through virulent pathogens, killer asteroids, marauding comets, exploding supernovas, and other such happenstances of mass destruction.

Fringe thinking? Hardly. Sober PhDs are behind these thoughts. Citing the hazard of genetically engineered viruses, eminent astrophysicist Stephen Hawking has said, "I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years." Martin Rees, the knighted British astronomer, agrees; he gives us a 50-50 chance. Serious thinkers such as Pulitzer Prize winner Laurie Garrett, author of The Coming Plague, and Bill Joy, who wrote Wired's own 2000 article "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us," warn of techno-calamity. Stephen Petranek, editor in chief of the science monthly Discover, crisscrosses the world lecturing on "15 Major Risks to the World and Life as We Know It." University of Maryland arms-control scholar John Steinbruner is lobbying organizations like the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the World Medical Association to establish an international review board with the power to ban research into the Pandora's box of biomedicine.

If we're talking about doomsday - the end of human civilization - many scenarios simply don't measure up. A single nuclear bomb ignited by terrorists, for example, would be awful beyond words, but life would go on. People and machines might converge in ways that you and I would find ghastly, but from the standpoint of the future, they would probably represent an adaptation. Environmental collapse might make parts of the globe unpleasant, but considering that the biosphere has survived ice ages, it wouldn't be the final curtain. Depression, which has become 10 times more prevalent in Western nations in the postwar era, might grow so widespread that vast numbers of people would refuse to get out of bed, a possibility that Petranek suggested in a doomsday talk at the Technology Entertainment Design conference in 2002. But Marcel Proust, as miserable as he was, wrote Remembrance of Things Past while lying in bed.

Of course, some worries are truly worrisome. Nuclear war might extinguish humanity, or at least bring an end to industrial civilization. The fact that tensions among the US, Russia, and China are low right now is no guarantee they'll remain so. Beyond the superpowers, India and Pakistan have demonstrated nuclear capability; North Korea either has or soon will have it; Japan may go nuclear if North Korea does; Iran and other countries could join the club before long. Radiation-spewing bombs raining from the sky would, no doubt, be cataclysmic. If you're in the mood to keep yourself up at night, nuclear war remains a good subject to ponder. But reversal of the planet's magnetic field?

At a time of global unease, worst-case scenarios have a certain appeal, not unlike reality TV. And it's only natural to focus on danger; if nature hadn't programmed human beings to be wary, the species might not have gotten this far. But a little perspective is in order. Let's review the various doomsday theories, from least threatening to most. If the end is inevitable, at least there won't be any surprises.

1. Laws of probability!
Standing at the Berlin Wall in 1969, Princeton astrophysicist J. Richard Gott III used a statistical formula to predict that the barrier would last 2.66 to 24 more years. It lasted 20. Later, Gott applied the same equation to humanity and calculated, with 95 percent certainty, that it would last 205,000 to 8 million more years. His paper on the subject made it into the august British scientific journal Nature.

Basically, Gott's formula (you will be spared the details) combines a series of estimates, then treats the result as though it was precise. Speculations about the far future have about as much chance of being spot-on as next week's weather forecast. But Gott's academic reputation won't suffer; if humanity still exists in 8.1 million years, it will be a little late to revoke his tenure.

2. Chemical weapons!
Spooky-sounding, sure. And dangerous. But bombs and bullets are dangerous, too. In actual use, chemical weapons have proven no more deadly, pound for pound, than conventional explosives. In World War I, the British and German armies expended 1 ton of chemical agents per enemy fatality.

Are modern nerve agents like sarin superdeadly in a way World War I mustard gas was not? When the Aum Shinrikyo cult attacked Tokyo's subway system with that substance in 1995 - the subway being an enclosed area, ideal for chemicals - 12 people died. That was 12 too many, but a conventional bomb the same size as the cult's canisters, detonated on a packed subway, would have killed more.

During this winter's duct tape scare, I heard a Washington, DC, radio talk-show host sternly lecture listeners to flee if "a huge cloud of poison gas" were slowly floating across the city. Noxious clouds of death may float across movie screens, but no military in the real world can create them. Wind rapidly disperses nerve agents, and sunlight breaks them down. Outdoors, a severe chemical attack likely would be confined to a few city blocks.

Some chemical incidents have been horrifyingly deadly. In 1994, when a Union Carbide plant accidentally loosed a cloud of methyl isocyanate over Bhopal, India, 8,000 people died, some of them 20 miles from the site. But the source was an industrial complex, and it spewed gas for an extended period of time, something no bomb or aircraft could do. Another heinous event, Iraq's poison gas attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988, killed an estimated 5,000. However, the slaughter involved dozens of Iraqi aircraft flying repeated sorties over an undefended city. Had they dropped conventional bombs, the toll might have been equally high.
.........................................................................................................

It's all too much for me.
I might just go lay down for a while.

BulletBob · 06-18-2003, 07:08 PM

Shit happens, thats pretty much my theory on doomsday. Seriously, I can't do anything about it so why waste time worrying? If an asteroid wants to hit earth so be it.

The_Dude · 06-18-2003, 07:14 PM

bull crap, we're goin to be here for a long ass time

GakFace · 06-18-2003, 07:24 PM

Quote:

he gives us a 50-50 chance

What a load of crap.. Isn't anything technically fifty fifty? I mean anyone can say. "Its fifty fifty, either it happens or it doesn't." Fifty Fifty... could they be any MORE coincedental? heh

Frowning Budah · 06-18-2003, 07:31 PM

Rather than worry abt doomsday I am kind of looking forward to it. I think we have gotten so far off the track the only thing that can fix it is to tear it all down and start again.

awanderingsoul · 06-19-2003, 01:08 AM

The human race is going to last anywhere from 205,000 years to 8 million years? Is this supposed to scare us? Why worry?

Bill O'Rights · 06-19-2003, 04:46 AM

I, for one, refuse to worry about it. There are much more pressing matters that require my attention, than worrying about something that I can do absolutely nothing about. We, as a species, will either make it, or not. (50/50 indeed) This spinning ball that we call home was here for a long time before us...and will be here for a long time after us. By wringing my hands over the iminent demise of mankind...I will have changed nothing.

platypus · 06-19-2003, 05:07 AM

True statement. But not today!

lurkette · 06-19-2003, 05:20 AM

Ugh. I'm going back to bed. Wake me for the end.

gov135 · 06-19-2003, 05:35 AM

It amazes me how scared and small some of our best and brightest can be.

MikeyChalupa · 06-19-2003, 06:13 AM

You all know who Gregg Easterbrook is, right? He writes for ESPN.com's Page 2. He has a colum entitled "Tuesday Morning Quarterback." Here's a link to his archive. If you're a football fan, it's a must-read. His column is by no means limited to football though. In fact, almost 50% of each column is dedicated to everything BUT football. He writes about cheer-babes (with a weekly featured NFL cheerleader during the season), Star Trek Enterprise, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and anything else the guy feels like writing about. There is, like everything else on Page 2, a strongly humorous slant to everything.

It looks like he also writes for Wired. I think this piece was intended as a humor piece, like everything else he writes. During last season, he spent a few weeks de-constructing the last Bond movie, explaining why the giant Korean Death Ray was impossible.

Funny piece here, it's definitely in his style. I don't think he wants you all to get worked up, just to get a smile out of you.

-Mikey

warrrreagl · 06-19-2003, 06:21 AM

And it's one-two-three what are we fightin' for?
Blah blah blah
Well, there ain't no time to wonder why.
Whoopee! We're all gonna die!

YourNeverThere · 06-19-2003, 08:10 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Frowning Budah
Rather than worry abt doomsday I am kind of looking forward to it. I think we have gotten so far off the track the only thing that can fix it is to tear it all down and start again.

Brilliant! my thoughts excatly, worry wont make it go away, and probably nothing i do will, so if i cant stop it, embrase it.

joesmith · 06-19-2003, 08:19 AM

Eventually, we are all going to die.... Even if our memory lives on, even the people that remember is will die.

GunslingerCold · 06-19-2003, 08:32 PM

Think about if people have survived to 7.99 million years from now. It would suck to know your going down soon

06-18-2003, 06:54 PM	#1 (permalink)
cchris Junkie Location: Sydney	We're All Gonna Die! But it won't be from germ warfare, runaway nanobots, or shifting magnetic poles. A skeptical guide to Doomsday. LINK TO STORY By Gregg Easterbrook Omigod, Earth's core is about to explode, destroying the planet and everything on it! That is, unless a gigantic asteroid strikes first. Or an advanced physics experiment goes haywire, negating space-time in a runaway chain reaction. Or the sun's distant companion star, Nemesis, sends an untimely barrage of comets our way. Or ... Not long ago, such cosmic thrills, chills, and spills were confined to comic books, sci-fi movies, and the Book of Revelation. Lately, though, they've seeped into a broader arena, filling not only late-night talk radio, where such topics don't seem particularly out of place, but also earnest TV documentaries, slick mass-market magazines, newspapers, and a growing number of purportedly nonfiction books. Everywhere you turn, pundits are predicting biblical-scale disaster. In many scenarios, mankind is the culprit, unleashing atmospheric carbon dioxide, genetically engineered organisms, or runaway nanobots to exact a bitter revenge for scientific meddling. But even if human deployment of technology proves benign, Mother Nature will assert her primacy through virulent pathogens, killer asteroids, marauding comets, exploding supernovas, and other such happenstances of mass destruction. Fringe thinking? Hardly. Sober PhDs are behind these thoughts. Citing the hazard of genetically engineered viruses, eminent astrophysicist Stephen Hawking has said, "I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years." Martin Rees, the knighted British astronomer, agrees; he gives us a 50-50 chance. Serious thinkers such as Pulitzer Prize winner Laurie Garrett, author of The Coming Plague, and Bill Joy, who wrote Wired's own 2000 article "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us," warn of techno-calamity. Stephen Petranek, editor in chief of the science monthly Discover, crisscrosses the world lecturing on "15 Major Risks to the World and Life as We Know It." University of Maryland arms-control scholar John Steinbruner is lobbying organizations like the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the World Medical Association to establish an international review board with the power to ban research into the Pandora's box of biomedicine. If we're talking about doomsday - the end of human civilization - many scenarios simply don't measure up. A single nuclear bomb ignited by terrorists, for example, would be awful beyond words, but life would go on. People and machines might converge in ways that you and I would find ghastly, but from the standpoint of the future, they would probably represent an adaptation. Environmental collapse might make parts of the globe unpleasant, but considering that the biosphere has survived ice ages, it wouldn't be the final curtain. Depression, which has become 10 times more prevalent in Western nations in the postwar era, might grow so widespread that vast numbers of people would refuse to get out of bed, a possibility that Petranek suggested in a doomsday talk at the Technology Entertainment Design conference in 2002. But Marcel Proust, as miserable as he was, wrote Remembrance of Things Past while lying in bed. Of course, some worries are truly worrisome. Nuclear war might extinguish humanity, or at least bring an end to industrial civilization. The fact that tensions among the US, Russia, and China are low right now is no guarantee they'll remain so. Beyond the superpowers, India and Pakistan have demonstrated nuclear capability; North Korea either has or soon will have it; Japan may go nuclear if North Korea does; Iran and other countries could join the club before long. Radiation-spewing bombs raining from the sky would, no doubt, be cataclysmic. If you're in the mood to keep yourself up at night, nuclear war remains a good subject to ponder. But reversal of the planet's magnetic field? At a time of global unease, worst-case scenarios have a certain appeal, not unlike reality TV. And it's only natural to focus on danger; if nature hadn't programmed human beings to be wary, the species might not have gotten this far. But a little perspective is in order. Let's review the various doomsday theories, from least threatening to most. If the end is inevitable, at least there won't be any surprises. 1. Laws of probability! Standing at the Berlin Wall in 1969, Princeton astrophysicist J. Richard Gott III used a statistical formula to predict that the barrier would last 2.66 to 24 more years. It lasted 20. Later, Gott applied the same equation to humanity and calculated, with 95 percent certainty, that it would last 205,000 to 8 million more years. His paper on the subject made it into the august British scientific journal Nature. Basically, Gott's formula (you will be spared the details) combines a series of estimates, then treats the result as though it was precise. Speculations about the far future have about as much chance of being spot-on as next week's weather forecast. But Gott's academic reputation won't suffer; if humanity still exists in 8.1 million years, it will be a little late to revoke his tenure. 2. Chemical weapons! Spooky-sounding, sure. And dangerous. But bombs and bullets are dangerous, too. In actual use, chemical weapons have proven no more deadly, pound for pound, than conventional explosives. In World War I, the British and German armies expended 1 ton of chemical agents per enemy fatality. Are modern nerve agents like sarin superdeadly in a way World War I mustard gas was not? When the Aum Shinrikyo cult attacked Tokyo's subway system with that substance in 1995 - the subway being an enclosed area, ideal for chemicals - 12 people died. That was 12 too many, but a conventional bomb the same size as the cult's canisters, detonated on a packed subway, would have killed more. During this winter's duct tape scare, I heard a Washington, DC, radio talk-show host sternly lecture listeners to flee if "a huge cloud of poison gas" were slowly floating across the city. Noxious clouds of death may float across movie screens, but no military in the real world can create them. Wind rapidly disperses nerve agents, and sunlight breaks them down. Outdoors, a severe chemical attack likely would be confined to a few city blocks. Some chemical incidents have been horrifyingly deadly. In 1994, when a Union Carbide plant accidentally loosed a cloud of methyl isocyanate over Bhopal, India, 8,000 people died, some of them 20 miles from the site. But the source was an industrial complex, and it spewed gas for an extended period of time, something no bomb or aircraft could do. Another heinous event, Iraq's poison gas attack on the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988, killed an estimated 5,000. However, the slaughter involved dozens of Iraqi aircraft flying repeated sorties over an undefended city. Had they dropped conventional bombs, the toll might have been equally high. ......................................................................................................... It's all too much for me. I might just go lay down for a while. __________________ There's a fine line between participation and mockery

06-18-2003, 07:14 PM	#3 (permalink)
The_Dude The GrandDaddy of them all! Location: Austin, TX	bull crap, we're goin to be here for a long ass time __________________ "Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." - Darrel K Royal

06-19-2003, 04:46 AM	#7 (permalink)
Bill O'Rights will always be an Alyson Hanniganite Location: In the dust of the archives	I, for one, refuse to worry about it. There are much more pressing matters that require my attention, than worrying about something that I can do absolutely nothing about. We, as a species, will either make it, or not. (50/50 indeed) This spinning ball that we call home was here for a long time before us...and will be here for a long time after us. By wringing my hands over the iminent demise of mankind...I will have changed nothing. __________________ "I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires." - Susan B. Anthony "Hedonism with rules isn't hedonism at all, it's the Republican party." - JumpinJesus It is indisputable that true beauty lies within...but a nice rack sure doesn't hurt.

06-19-2003, 05:07 AM	#8 (permalink)
platypus Essen meine kurze Hosen Location: NY Burbs	True statement. But not today! __________________ Out the 10Base-T, through the router, down the T1, over the leased line, off the bridge, past the firewall...nothing but Net.

06-19-2003, 05:20 AM	#9 (permalink)
lurkette My future is coming on Moderator Emeritus Location: east of the sun and west of the moon	Ugh. I'm going back to bed. Wake me for the end. __________________ "If ten million people believe a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing." - Anatole France

06-18-2003, 07:08 PM	#2 (permalink)
BulletBob Psycho Location: Rupp Arena	Shit happens, thats pretty much my theory on doomsday. Seriously, I can't do anything about it so why waste time worrying? If an asteroid wants to hit earth so be it.

06-18-2003, 07:31 PM	#5 (permalink)
Frowning Budah Slave of Fear	Rather than worry abt doomsday I am kind of looking forward to it. I think we have gotten so far off the track the only thing that can fix it is to tear it all down and start again.

06-19-2003, 01:08 AM	#6 (permalink)
awanderingsoul Crazy	The human race is going to last anywhere from 205,000 years to 8 million years? Is this supposed to scare us? Why worry?

06-19-2003, 05:35 AM	#10 (permalink)
gov135 Junkie Location: Midwest	It amazes me how scared and small some of our best and brightest can be.

06-19-2003, 06:13 AM	#11 (permalink)
MikeyChalupa Squid Location: USS George Washington	You all know who Gregg Easterbrook is, right? He writes for ESPN.com's Page 2. He has a colum entitled "Tuesday Morning Quarterback." Here's a link to his archive. If you're a football fan, it's a must-read. His column is by no means limited to football though. In fact, almost 50% of each column is dedicated to everything BUT football. He writes about cheer-babes (with a weekly featured NFL cheerleader during the season), Star Trek Enterprise, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and anything else the guy feels like writing about. There is, like everything else on Page 2, a strongly humorous slant to everything. It looks like he also writes for Wired. I think this piece was intended as a humor piece, like everything else he writes. During last season, he spent a few weeks de-constructing the last Bond movie, explaining why the giant Korean Death Ray was impossible. Funny piece here, it's definitely in his style. I don't think he wants you all to get worked up, just to get a smile out of you. -Mikey

06-19-2003, 06:21 AM	#12 (permalink)
warrrreagl pinche vato Location: backwater, Third World, land of cotton	And it's one-two-three what are we fightin' for? Blah blah blah Well, there ain't no time to wonder why. Whoopee! We're all gonna die! __________________ Living is easy with eyes closed.

06-19-2003, 08:19 AM	#14 (permalink)
joesmith Tilted Location: toronto	Eventually, we are all going to die.... Even if our memory lives on, even the people that remember is will die.

06-19-2003, 08:32 PM	#15 (permalink)
GunslingerCold Banned Location: IL	Think about if people have survived to 7.99 million years from now. It would suck to know your going down soon